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Jiran
Jiran, ceremoniously referred to as His Radiance Jiran, 13th of the Line of Luminance, was the 13th Sun-King of the Carja Sundom in Horizon Zero Dawn. His reign is almost universally regarded with revulsion. He is notorious not only for his brutal and despotic reign, but for the terror he inflicted on every other tribe in the known world via the Red Raids. He was deposed by his second son Avad, who became tired of and revulsed by his atrocities. The fallout from his reign and overthrow play a crucial role in the contemporary events seen in Horizon Zero Dawn. Background Jiran was the son of Hivas, the 12th Sun-King.The Sun-Kings He had at least two wives, with whom he sired three living children, all sons. His first wife, name unknown, presumably bore both of his two elder children; first Kadaman and then Avad. He is presumed to have married his wife Nasadi after the death of his first, since the Carja appear to be monogamous. Nasadi bore his third child, Itamen. History Early Reign Jiran inherited a strong military from his father. He used this strength to defend the Sundom from encroachment by other tribes. When the phenomenon known as the Derangement began, the military adequately defended the people from the steadily more hostile and deadlier machines that were appearing. Thus Jiran was initially lauded as a strong leader. Degeneration Jiran’s success, however, was accompanied by a steadily growing megalomania. He began to perceive himself not as the Sun’s chosen vessel, but as the incarnation of the Sun itself. He would order bloodshed at any slight; indeed, he reached a point where under his reign the Carja had no peace with any tribe. One of the first major signs of his burgeoning despotism was his commissioning of an order of elite soldiers and personal guard, fanatically loyal not to the monarchy, but to him personally. He called these men his Kestrels. The first of them were the survivors of a training regimen that took place in the Sandwhisper Valley, lashed by sandstorms strong enough to scour armor.History of Sunfall Domestic Cruelty As Jiran’s rule degenerated into tyranny, so did tyranny spread throughout Carja society. Slavery, introduced by Jiran’s father Hivas, became a very prominent feature of Carja life. Slave owners were allowed to do with their slaves as they wished, without consequence. Inhumane treatment of servants such as the severe floggings inflicted on the Carja spy Vanasha and her family, all servants during Jiran’s reign, were the norm. Even the free underclass was under the whims of the nobility and the Sun-Priests; no one in the underclass could refuse an instruction from a noble or priest, no matter how base, or they could be flogged as punishment, or worse. The Carja hunter Furahni, for example, was flogged as a teenager during Jiran’s reign for refusing the sexual advances of a Sun-Priest. The Red Raids Jiran’s despotism continued to grow. Finally it culminated in his ordering what are considered to be the worst atrocities ever committed in the known world to date. He became convinced that the ongoing Derangement could be ended by human sacrifice. He therefore ordered the army, including the Kestrels, to raid other tribes’ lands, seize their people and bring them back to the Carja capital Meridian to be the victims. So began the Red Raids. For ten years, every known tribe, from nearby tribes such as the Nora to distant tribes such as the Utaru, was mercilessly invaded and victims seized and transported to their deaths. Jiran was cruelly calculating in how these raids were conducted; he would order an entire generation taken from an attacked village, to break the spirit of the tribe and reduce the number of defenders the raiders had to contend with the next time.The Mad Sun-King (Datapoint)At Meridian, and at Jiran’s summer palace at Sunfall when he was there, in a huge arena known as the Sun-Ring, the victims were driven in after being held in prison cells underneath the Ring. Before thousands of gathered Carja, huge, powerful machines such as Behemoths were loosed on them. The machines slaughtered the victims as the crowd watched. Some captives, such as the Banuk shaman Ourea, managed to avoid being sacrificed because of their skill at capturing machines; they were therefore used to capture machines to be loosed on the victims. Others, such as the Oseram warrior Ersa, survived the Sun-Ring, impressing Jiran so much, despite his cruelty, that he made them palace slaves. Additionally, Red Raid commanders such as Zaid and Jiran’s champion Helis were notorious for their egregious cruelty during raids conducted by their units, all with Jiran’s approval. Public Opposition Not all Carja were in favor of the raids and sacrifices. Those who spoke up, however, met the same fate, as Jiran was not above using Carja dissidents as victims as well as foreign tribespeople. Several Hawks of the Carja Hunters Lodge, including then-Sunhawk Talavad Khane Padish, died in the Sun-Ring after publicly criticizing the bloodshed. As for the Sun-Priests, while a few objected, most of them blessed the killing, believing it to be the will of the Sun, as well as out of loyalty to Jiran. Avad’s Liberation Then came the breaking point. Prince Kadaman, Jiran’s eldest son, demanded of his father that the raids and sacrifices end. Jiran did not spare members of his house his wrath if they opposed him; he had Kadaman sacrificed in the Sun-Ring. However his brother Prince Avad was also a dissident, and Kadaman’s execution drove him to action. He and his honor guard fled Meridian to the tribal land of the Oseram, The Claim, hoping to organize an alliance of tribes to march on Meridian and depose Jiran. Jiran declared them all traitors on finding out. In The Claim, Avad met Ersa, whom he had become friends with during her time as a palace slave, and whom he had helped escape. She and her brother Erend had connections to Oseram warlords and freebooters who fought against the Carja raiders. She and Erend helped Avad form the alliance that spawned his liberation army.Meridian's Fall Overthrow and Death After months of preparation, the liberators marched on Meridian. According to the Carja spymaster Marad, Jiran’s chief advisor and a dissident himself, he helped prepare them from within Jiran’s court though as yet unrevealed means. As the liberators advanced deeper into the Sundom, dissident Carja soldiers they encountered joined them, swelling their ranks. Jiran therefore quickly found himself facing a large invasion force composed of much of the Carja army. Only the Kestrels and a relatively small number of Carja soldiers remained loyal to him. Among the civilians, much of the of the nobility remained loyal to him, but the oppressed underclass sided with Avad. The liberators successfully invaded the city, but Jiran’s megalomania would not allow surrender. “Ever the strong are beset upon by the weak,” he told Helis as he gave him his final orders: take his queen Nasadi and his youngest son Itamen, along with all his loyalists - the Kestrels, nobles and Sun-Priests, as well as their slaves - to his summer palace at Sunfall, while he remained in Meridian and faced Avad. With his Kestrels and loyal soldiers gone, Jiran met Avad alone in his Solarium. Avad desperately attempted to persuade him to surrender, but Jiran utterly refused to do so, forcing Avad to kill him. Carja belief holds that the murder of the Sun-King would destroy the world by extinguishing the Sun. To the Carja who supported Avad, the aftermath of Jiran’s death at his hand was therefore conclusive proof that the Sun had never been in support of his brutality and had renounced him, as the Sun continued shining.The Liberation Legacy Jiran’s reign and the atrocities it spawned are universally considered, with the exception of fanatical loyalists such as Helis, to be the darkest and most horrific period in the history of the known world. In addition to those who were killed in his despotic rule over his people, untold numbers of foreign tribespeople, likely numbering in the hundreds of thousands, were killed in the Red Raids and human sacrifices he ordered. The consensus among Carja and non-Carja alike is that he was insane; he is thus almost universally derided as “the Mad Sun-King”. Furthermore, his brutal reign had far-reaching direct and indirect consequences, some of which only became evident years after his death. The Oseram warlord Dervahl, whose wife and daughter Jiran specifically had captured and sacrificed in the Sun-Ring, became so consumed with hatred for the Carja that, years after the Liberation, he planned and almost committed a terrorist bombing in Meridian that would have killed a large number of the city’s residents. The plan was foiled by the Nora huntress Aloy. Even greater consequences almost resulted years after Avad’s Liberation, one of which was the worst possible: the destruction of life on Earth. The Carja who went to Sunfall became a splinter tribe known as the Shadow Carja. Their de facto rulers were Helis and the High Priest Bahavas. The two men’s desire to retake the Sundom and kill Avad was used by the artificial intelligence HADES to manipulate them into forming a secret cult known as the Eclipse. This cult almost destroyed the Nora, first in an attack ordered by HADES to kill Aloy known as the Proving Massacre, then in a genocidal attack ordered by Helis as retribution against Aloy’s dogged interference in Eclipse operations. HADES’ ultimate purpose for the Eclipse was to use them to secure the ancient monument in the Sundom known as the Spire, the means by which it intended to reactivate the Faro Plague and allow it to permanently exterminate all life on Earth. It had ordered the attack on Aloy because it knew her to be a threat to its existence. However the Proving Massacre failed to kill Aloy, and she went on to rally the Nora to defeat the Eclipse and ultimately assemble an alliance of warriors of various tribes that foiled HADES’ plan. Personality At the start of his reign, Jiran was a strong, capable leader. However he degenerated into a cruel, malicious and paranoid despot. It may be surmised that the stress of not being able to stop the Derangement accelerated this degeneration, though signs of it began appearing before the Derangement. Nevertheless, one aspect of his personality remained unchanged: his reward of loyalty. For example, while the exact timeframe is unknown, when Helis' wife died in childbirth, Jiran honored Helis by allowing them to be buried at the Alight, an honor reserved for the royal family and national heroes.Without Pity However, as was the case with Kadaman, any perceived disloyalty was met with deadly wrath. Trivia * Jiran is referred to as Jahadin in the ''Art of Horizon Zero Dawn ''companion book. * Jiran has the longest confirmed reign of any Sun-King; according to the scanned glyph The Liberation, he served as Sun-King for approximately 21 years. *The three versions of Song to the Sun - sung at dawn, midday, and dusk - are the names of all the Sun-Kings. After his death, Jiran's name was removed. References Category:Deceased Characters Category:Sun-Kings Category:Mentioned-only Characters Category:Carja Tribe Members Category:Carja Lore